New patient Phil told me he’d been suffering muscle pain every single day for more than eight years. He’d seen neurologists and rheumatologists, had had an MRI of his spine, was told he had spinal stenosis (narrowing), had cortisone shots, and recently had been scheduled for neurosurgery. Then a friend told him to stop taking […]
Category: Diseases
Some diseases that conventional and integrative medicine focus on may include allergies and food sensitivities, candida and parasite issues, cardiovascular disease, ear, nose and throat, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, gut and digestive concerns, over inflammation, mold toxicity, thyroid, adrenal and sex hormone issues, and weight concerns.
Case Study: Why Is My Hair Falling Out?
Barbara was 30 and what she’d written on her WholeHealth Chicago form certainly didn’t match her appearance. On the first line, “My hair is falling out!” And on the second, “Tired!” Physically she looked healthy, but her face reflected a worried shadow. “I know it looks like I have a lot of hair,” she began, […]
Cancer Screening: Overdiagnosed, Overtreated, and Blind to the Risks?
Posted 01/12/2014 At first blush, cancer screening seems like a no-brainer, sort of like getting your teeth cleaned. You don’t relish the project, but you know it’s good for you. And if a screening detects a God-forbid-bite-your-tongue-don’t-say-the-word diagnosis, at least you’ve likely caught it early. Oh, were life so straightforward. Ponder this a moment. When […]
Fruitcake, Genes, and Exercise: A Spooky Holiday Story
Starting around Thanksgiving and generally ending on January 2, we’re surrounded by too much food. Many of us who spent 2013 really (really!) trying to lose weight and eat healthfully dread the havoc these dark December days can wreak on our bodies. It’s agonizingly easy to add some pounds. Then, come January, we despair at […]
Angelina Jolie, BRCA Testing, and You
The extremely talented actress and director Angelina Jolie made world news last May when she revealed in a New York Times op-ed that she’d taken the proactive step of having both breasts removed to prevent dying of breast cancer, as her own mother had at age 56. Jolie had learned that she had a specific, […]
Our Statin Nation
Although they don’t know who they are, 11 million Americans awakened last week as victims of a new disease, the dreaded “statin deficiency disorder,” or SDD. It’s not easy to diagnose because there are no symptoms. Even the lab test once closely linked to the word “statin”—cholesterol measuring–may miss SDD. In fact, with no symptoms […]
A Blood Test That Could Save Your Life
One of the most challenging decisions a primary care physician faces concerns preventing a heart attack in a patient who has risk factors, such as high cholesterol, and iffy symptoms like shoulder pain or shortness of breath. As a doctor, you’re uncertain whether or not you should work on the risk factors or send your […]
What’s Your Risk? Breast Cancer in the News Again
I was pleasantly surprised to learn how much damage occurred at the Susan G. Komen Foundation in response to its astonishingly wrong-headed decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. Women (and smart men) around the country were rightly outraged that money earmarked for the breast cancer screening of low-income women–not for family planning or […]
Progress On Prostate Cancer
Please forward this to all the MEN on your contact list. Having an aging prostate gland myself, I do follow the trends in preventing, diagnosing, and treating prostate cancer, an extremely common but fortunately not highly lethal disease. It’s been said, for example, that every man, if he lives long enough, will eventually develop prostate […]
Avoiding The Antibiotic Doomsday Scenario
Does anyone remember the late director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”? A deranged US Air Force officer manages to launch a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union (now Russia). When the president calls in the Russian ambassador to apologize for this embarrassment, the […]
Medical Research: A Satisfying Drink from A Firehose
As a physician, one of the most useful aspects of the internet is the ease with which I can keep up with the latest in medicine. In medical school and throughout my training, I learned that the typical medical textbook (despite its heft) was extremely limited in scope and a full five years behind current […]
“Club Med” Diet
Posted 04/15/2013 I was surprised to learn that the much-revered Mediterranean Diet went back nearly 70 years to the work of American physician Ancel Keys, MD, stationed in Italy during World War II. Keys, who died in 2004 at age 100 (!), noted the very low incidence of heart disease and the excellent longevity among […]
Alternative Medicine and Cancer
Right up front, let me say if alternative medicine therapies could cure cancer they wouldn’t be alternative. Conspiracy theory alert: there is no plot on the part of oncologists, radiation therapists, pharmaceutical companies, et al. to keep lifesaving alternative therapies just beyond your reach so they can control your lives (and pocketbooks). If the mainstream […]
Multivitamins Prevent Cancer
The medical profession has always been very reluctant to acknowledge that vitamins are useful for anything except treating vitamin deficiency diseases, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary. This negativism toward vitamins begins in medical school, where doctors-in-training are indoctrinated with phrases like “Vitamins end up in the toilet,” “Anyone eating a healthy diet […]
Acetaminophen (Tylenol) and Your Liver
A recent issue of Hepatology, a medical journal devoted to liver diseases, featured a lengthy discussion about acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol and many other medicines.
Acetaminophen is sold both over-the-counter and by doctor’s prescription, and more than 600 products now contain it. The conclusions of this article are definitely worth sharing with you.
Are You The Canary in Our Coal Mine?
The canary in the coal mine had its literal origins in the mining industry. In order to test for toxic gases, miners would lower a caged canary into a mine shaft. Bringing up a dead songbird meant humans wouldn’t be descending that shaft. The metaphor remains apt because, even today, some of us are the […]
A Final Commonly Missed Diagnosis: Functional Symptoms
This missed diagnosis is a bit more complicated. It’s not one specific condition, like a slightly underactive thyroid or gluten intolerance. It’s about you and your doctor’s tunnel vision, the “if your only tool is a hammer, then everything around you is a nail” sort of thinking. Functional symptoms constitute a huge spectrum of missed […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses: Candida (Yeast)
Posted 06/18/2012 Back in 1993, several weeks before the opening of what would be known as WholeHealth Chicago, I was summoned to the office of the chief of medicine at the hospital where I was a staff member. The chief had heard rumors I was opening a center that would combine conventional and alternative practitioners […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses: Parasites
Posted 06/11/2012 If internet scare tactics from companies selling herbal supplements for parasites weren’t enough, the cable TV show “Monsters Inside Me” with its toe-curling film clips has cinched it. We’re in a new “Alien versus Predator” mode, though you might ask which one is us and which them. Those really large parasites you’ll see […]
Six Commonly Missed Diagnoses: Gluten Sensitivity
Post 06/04/2012 The current guesstimate says roughly 20% of the population are intolerant to gluten, with about 1% of that group having a potentially fatal intestinal condition called celiac disease. The remaining 19% or so are classified as having “non-celiac gluten sensitivity.” Despite the dozens and dozens of medical and psychiatric conditions linked to gluten […]